


Three Things That Never Happened To the Muster-Roll Soldiers

by Gehayi



Category: Henry IV Part 2 - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Bribery, Con Artists, Curses, Disabled Character, Female Friendship, Gen, Guilt, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Refugees, Soldiers, Theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 09:05:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4619601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gehayi/pseuds/Gehayi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The muster-roll soldiers were through with rumors, dishonorable bargains and guilt in Justice Shallow's orchard. But, in three alternate universes, those things were not yet through with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Things That Never Happened To the Muster-Roll Soldiers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lilliburlero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/gifts).



> **Disclaimer:** I most emphatically am not William Shakespeare. This should not come as a shock to anyone.
> 
>  **Prompt:** A long shot maybe, but I would love fic about the muster-roll soldiers in Henry IV Part Two, especially Feeble.

**I. Locusts**

Ralph Mouldy wasn't surprised that it took a hefty bribe to free himself from the muster-roll. A man had to pay for what he craved; that was the way of the world, whether you were a prince in Ethiopia or a farmer in Gloucestershire. His wife Jane would be cross that he'd paid forty shillings for the privilege of returning home, and she would be even angrier if she knew that he'd called her his "old dame" and had implied, very strongly, that she was his aged and almost helpless mother. 

But that too was the way of it. It was never enough to have the correct price at the ready; you had to have a story. People who demanded bribes never seemed to want to admit it; they wanted tales to persuade them that they were being compassionate or reasonable. So he'd handed over the silver, and it had felt like handing over his life's blood; a good portion of what would have gone toward next year's harvest had been spent right there. He'd spun a tale of a simple life that could all too easily become a tragedy. And it had worked. He was returning home…somewhat poorer, but he could earn more money, or so he hoped. Eyes, limbs and lives, once lost to a sword or the bullet of an arquebus, were a bit harder to reclaim.

And so he plodded home from Justice Shallow's orchard, both his purse and his heart somewhat lighter.

As he had predicted, Jane—who had reddish hair and a temper to match—was not pleased about the bribe. But she was even more concerned that Corporal Bardolph would return. 

"He and his master have your name now," she said. "They know where you farm and where you live. And they know that you had the coin to pay them once. So what is to stop them from farming you again and again, an it please them, to harvest sheaves of shillings?"

"They'll not do that, Jenny," Ralph said gently, hoping that he could soothe her. "The war is coming soon, and they'll need to gather a fair muster of men…and find food and clothes and some manner of arms for them. They won't have time."

Jane looked down her long, thin nose at him, and Ralph felt his skin roasting as if he were a New Year's goose. She was a head shorter than he was, but at times like this, it seemed as if Jane were a giantess and he was no larger than her little toe.

"I have heard of beggars fighting in the streets over a penny," she said calmly. "Two greedy men just winkled forty shillings out of you, and belike that they'll be back soon enough for every last coin you own, and the land, the seed in the land, and most probably pond fish and fruit trees as well."

It was, Ralph privately conceded, possible, but the thought of selling everything and moving to another part of Gloucestershire was daunting. Everything—and everyone—that he knew was here. He had no desire to go marching off to somewhere else just to prevent the king's forces from marching him off to somewhere else. He stammered out some variation of this to Jane, tripping over his tongue as he attempted to describe how it felt to see sheaves of barley blowing gently in the wind at harvest time or the ocean of black, just-plowed furrows covering the land in spring—not just as an owner, but for its beauty. 

He would have liked to say—but did not—that he relished September here because September meant apples. When he and Jane had been somewhat younger, before the farm had been more than marginally profitable and they half so respectable, Jane had helped him pick the apples, climbing up into the trees with a basket in the grip of one hand and a branch tight in the other's. She always returned with her face flushed from the effort of maneuvering a heavy basket full of apples, her wimple askew and her riotous curls dark auburn with sweat. _Like Eve,_ Ralph thought, certain that if anyone had seen Jane at that moment, they would have left off the gibes about her features (which most of his neighbors wrongly deemed too freckled and sharp for beauty) and would understand that some women were worth a bushel of forbidden fruit…and that while they lived, so did Paradise.

The thought of losing the trees that had made those memories made bile rise in Ralph's throat.

He tried to quiet Jane's fears and his own. Surely Bardolph and his master were gone by now…and war would surely be more profitable for a corporal and a knight, even an old knight, than idling about in the country and terrifying good Gloucester farmers for handfuls of cash. There was no need to worry. All would be well.

For a time, he even half-persuaded himself that it was so. 

But then, scarcely a month or two later, rumors began creeping about the village. The war was over, and the king had won; no, he had lost, and Northumberland now sat on the throne. King Henry had died of a dreadful illness; no, it was _Prince_ Henry who was dead, killed in the streets of London by an old man who spoke him fair. But no, Prince Henry was fighting beside his brothers, trying to lure King Northumberland and his allies into a trap and avenge the cowardly poisoning of Old King Henry. Young Henry was preparing to war with France, which had done something nameless and unspeakably vile that demanded royal vengeance; no, he would soon set off to battle the Irish; no, he could not even claim the throne until he crushed the rebellions in Scotland and the Borderlands. 

All the rumors were different…but all swore that war and death were in the wind.

And then recruiters began creeping into Gloucestershire.

Whether they were honest knights and true soldiers or merely thieves who had found an easy way of forcing men to ransom themselves, Ralph Mouldy knew not, but the price they demanded of their victims was cruel. Bribing one group was, just possibly, manageable. Paying forty shillings or more three or four times a month was beyond the dreams of avarice. A few men even dared to defy them, saying that they had not the coin for such things and that they begged to be excused from war.

Most of the recruiters took this ill. Not all did; one day while on his way to market Ralph spied Peter Bullcalf posing as one Corporal Jack Boarshead at the gate to what had once been Justice Shallow's estate. Bullcalf looked most bewildered that a young cooper would dare refuse to bribe men from the army. Ralph laughed to himself and went on his way. Bullcalf was indifferent to battle; he'd told Corporal Bardolph so. The cooper, young and scrawny as he was, was in no danger…though, as Ralph glimpsed the fire in the cooper's eyes as he drove past, he couldn't say the same of Bullcalf. 

But most recruiters, if they were not freely given coin, felt that this was license to take everything that was not nailed down—livestock, wool, grain, cloth, furniture—and to burn whatever they couldn't. "Claimed for the king!" or "the princes!" or "the duke!" was their constant refrain. No one knew if they were telling the truth or not; there was often little difference between bandits and soldiers, save that soldiers usually had a flag.

"They'll leave in a few months," he told Jane in their cottage one night after their evening meal "We only need last until then."

Jane sighed. "And will we still have livestock then?" she said in a voice so patient that Ralph found it faintly unnerving. "Or a barn? Or a roof over our heads? Will both of us still be alive when they leave? And what is to prevent any of the 'recruiters' from circling back and starting anew?"

"You don't think—"

"I think that they are small bands of thieves—too small to attract much attention yet from London, if a king still rules there. And I think that they intend to steal all they can before moving on to lusher pastures."

Ralph wondered bleakly at whose feet he could lay the blame for this. Was Bardolph to blame, or Falstaff? Or Bullcalf, who, Ralph did not doubt, had latched onto the notion and told each and every of his drinking companions about a quick way to earn a fistful of shillings? Or should he blame the thieves themselves, who had not had to adopt the plot of greedy amateurs? 

"We'll manage, husband," said Jane firmly, her words striking Ralph like stones. "We'll carry what we can, sell what we cannot, and make a new home, a new farm, elsewhere. Smaller, perhaps…but ours."

Jane was right, Ralph knew. It was the practical, sensible thing to do. They would be fine. But he could not refrain from opening the cottage door just a hair and peering into the blackness, where, somewhere to the east, his apple trees stood.

Jane shivered. "The wind's lazy tonight." It was the old term for a bitter, biting wind. Too lazy to go around you, so it went through you instead. "Please, Ralph, shut the door." 

"In a moment," he replied, not meaning a word of it. The thought of closing the door on everything he loved seemed to be the height of ill luck. 

He didn't say so, though. Jane would think it was foolish. Almost as foolish as wanting to weep for the loss of a few twisted fruit trees and a home that had been his personal paradise.

***

**II. Treasure Trove**

Peter Bullcalf had never before longed for coins to leave him alone.

That wasn't his real name, though it always amazed him that someone somewhere hadn't realized this. He had taken it, partly as a joke, from a story he'd heard once at a fair about a rich peasant couple who had foolishly paid barrels of gold and silver to a passing scholar, telling him that they lacked an heir, and so they wished him to teach their bull-calf, Peter, to speak, read and write like a human. 

Of course, the scholar had done what any sensible man would do, taking the calf with him and pocketing the peasants' money for three years before selling the now-grown bull to a butcher. The peasants hadn't suspected a thing. They only became anxious when they weren't able to get in touch with the scholar, setting off in search of their son, the bull-calf. A fortunate blacksmith named Peter Bull met them on the road. The peasants, on hearing his name and seeing his shaggy red curls and half-stolid, half-belligerent features, immediately proclaimed him to be their son in human form, adopted him, and bestowed all their wealth on him when they died.

Peter smirked a bit at the thought. He believed with a fervor that had once marked the most zealous of crusaders that it was morally wrong to allow the naïve and the gullible keep their coin or, if they were short on cash, their chattel. They'd only waste both. It was far better for money and the odd portable piece of property to end in the hands of a man who would give them the love and respect that they so richly deserved.

So of course the blacksmith hadn't argued with the foolish peasants. Why would he, when Fate was raining gold and jewels on his undeserving head? No one would protest in a situation like that. And a truly practical man would grab the largest sack he could find and hold it wide open.

This was Peter's form of practicality, and it had served him well over the years. He was young and strong enough to work…but why bother when others who had sweated and struggled over the most onerous tasks would _beg_ you to take their money?

To be sure, some people did take a little persuading before they volunteered their coins. But the persuasion had never been forceful. Words could leave just as many wounds as a beating could, though the injuries didn't show. If you were clever, you could convince people to persuade (and perhaps wound) themselves with their own thoughts, which made everything beautifully simple.

Or so it had been until he'd met that damnable cooper. The one who hadn't wanted to be added to a muster-roll of soldiers and who hadn't approved of the game that Peter had learned from an old lieutenant and an even older knight. 

It had never occurred to Peter, before that day in the boresome judge's orchard, that _not_ creating an army could be at least as profitable as creating one. More so, because dukes and earls tended to get nervous about commoners who had armies behind them. Wat Tyler and Jack Straw had led armies, or at least crowds that could have grown into armies, given the slightest encouragement, back when the old king was a boy and had been no more than—what _did_ you call the son of a duke? A dukelet? A dukeling? The point was that it hadn't ended well for Tyler or Straw. Rich people didn't like poor people with power; that made the poor look as if they might be worth listening to.

Peter had little interest in politics and didn't particularly care if he was never deemed worth listening to by those in authority. The lordlings could keep their titles, their lands and their bizarre conviction that commoners respected them. Any lord who had ever employed a tax collector—a profession that Peter had carried out, or pretended to, on several occasions—really should have known that respect was not the most noteworthy emotion the poor felt toward the rich. The prospect of being hated in the future did not disturb Peter in the least. As long as he had enough gold and silver to build a sturdy but hidden existence that was proof against famine, disease, and the killing cold of winter, and enough anonymity to continue to earn it even after he had become obscenely rich, that was sufficient.

But then the cooper had come along, a skinny young journeyman with a purse full of silver—some money he'd earned on his own and that his master had allowed him to keep—and a bellyful of ale. The sort of person who was a gift to Peter Bullcalf and to the person he was being at the moment, army recruiter Corporal Jack Boarshead.

And it was rude to refuse a gift.

Normally, it took two men to do this sort of thing. However, recently there had been problems with bandits conducting a similar trick, only with more muskets and knives and less tricking and cozening. They had upset his plans terribly. He'd all but decided to leave town and worry about "Peter Bullcalf's" property later when the journeyman cooper had stumbled in, fairly pouring silver into the innkeeper's hands.

He'd watched the cooper for a while; there would be no point in approaching a Judas goat for a band of thieves, and there were more than a few of that sort about. Disgusting. It was enough to make you lose your faith in humanity.

But the lad had been a decent sort, or so it seemed—bewildered by a new, strange town, eager to celebrate a recent success, and as drunk on his success as his beer. It had been the easiest thing in the world for Peter to eavesdrop on the cooper and then to ask the innkeeper—in the most perplexed of tones—if there was a family or a shopkeeper or a farm by thus-and-so name. He'd had a run of quite deliberate bad luck (one family dead, one shop burned by thieves, and one farm that was three towns away) when he'd mentioned the name of the cooper who—as if Peter hadn't deduced this already from the conversation—was a local boy. 

From then on, it had been an initially awkward but ultimately amiable conversation between two men torn between their duty to their country and a friendship of a day or two. It was remarkable how many people would give and hazard all they had for someone that they barely knew but felt that they did.

And he'd almost done it. He'd very nearly convinced the cooper that he was a reasonable man. _Got a brother your age,_ he'd told the young cooper, whose name, he'd learned, was Ned. _Wouldn't want to see him going off to fight against Northumberland's troops either. I'll help you out the way I hope someone would help him._

It had been going beautifully…and then, abruptly, it hadn't.

Peter wasn't sure what had gone wrong, precisely. He only knew that, between one sentence and the next, Ned the cooper grasped everything and started shouting.

For a few moments, Peter had feared that he was in for a beating. He was young and strong, yes, but he had never _felt_ strong. Strength—at least the physical variety—was for smiths and stonemasons, not for a man who wheedled and charmed money out of others. Furthermore, Ned was afire with rage, so much so that he could have easily wrestled a lion and a leopard simultaneously.

Trying to calm people who were so enraged that they were all but spitting flames never worked, so he didn't try. Instead, he prepared to bolt, not really listening to what Ned had to say. This, he was forced to acknowledge, had been a very bad mistake, for he only caught the last few sentences, spoken as they were in a bitter, venomous tone.

"…if you want money so much, if that's all you care about, then I hope you get your fill of it! I hope it dogs your footsteps! I hope you choke on it!"

And then Ned had hit him, and Peter had to concentrate on more important things, like dodging further blows—the boy's fists were small, but his knuckles felt like spikes—and trying to _get_ away without looking as if he was _running_ away. He did escape from the wrathful cooper eventually with most of his money still firmly in his grasp, though by then his arms were bruised, his stomach aching, and his right kneecap beginning to swell.

It took him several days to reach a village where he hadn't been before. There he took refuge in an exceptionally bad inn called the King's Crown, paying the innkeeper for a room with a handful of pence and muttering something about being set upon by cruel men who had battered him almost to his last breath. The innkeeper, however, did not offer to send his wife up to Peter's room with hot water and bandages; he merely said stolidly that there seemed to be a fair number of cruel men about these days and that "Stephen Thatcher's" room was upstairs, third from the left.

Peter hurried upstairs. It was a tiny room whose straw mattress needed stuffing and whose window was missing one shutter. He collapsed onto the pallet, scarcely aware of whether he was lying atop a sheet, and fell asleep almost at once.

What woke him was weight. Something was pressing down on his chest.

He thought at first that it was an evil dream of something monstrous sitting on his chest or choking him. Everyone had dreams like that at times, though he would have preferred it happening sometime when he was not exhausted.

But it wasn't a dream demon. It was his belt-purse, swollen to sack-like proportions and so crammed with coins that he could almost feel his breastbone cracking beneath the weight. Opening his mouth, he tried to inhale, but it was no good. No air filled his lungs; in fact, he thought that the purse might have grown just a hair heavier.

Impatiently, he pushed the wretched thing, half-certain that his hands would pass straight through it. 

It was like trying to budge a mountain.

 _Someone thinks that this is a fine jest,_ Peter thought grimly as, gasping and sweating, he shoved his aching arms against the bulging purse. It might have taken root on his chest for all the good that he was doing. Maybe the innkeeper or his wife had taken all of the money that he'd worked…well, cozened…so hard for and replaced each coin with a massive stone. 

_Don't be foolish,_ his mind told him. _When would they have had time to do that? They have an inn to run._

Again he tried to move it. Again and again and again. Nothing happened…unless he wanted to count feeling as if he was spiraling down into a maelstrom and black stars were bursting before his eyes.

Then, in the last moment before consciousness, Peter felt the purse shift just slightly backward. _All right,_ he heard someone sigh. _Just remember later that I did offer you the quick way._

Peter blacked out briefly, surfacing a few minutes later before drifting off to sleep for the remainder of the night.

When he awoke the next morning, the purse was back to its normal size and completely empty…but the room was ankle deep in gold and silver.

***

Peter's first thought was that it was counterfeit. He knew to the last penny how much he had in his purse, and he did not have this much. He was certain that the king himself didn't.

His second thought was to scramble from the pallet and grab as many handfuls of what had to be the best fortune that a man could wish for. He had no idea how this had happened, but he was more than satisfied with it. And to think that last night he'd been _cursing_ the purse…

His head still a trifle woozy, he squatted down slowly; bending too fast and too far would have him face down on the floor again. And why sleep when he could be collecting wealth beyond compare?

He reached out a hand to the nearest pile of coins…

…and the pile moved away from him.

Peter gaped at this and then shook his head to clear it. Coins didn't move of their own accord. He must still be dizzy. 

He tried again, this time going after a different heap of gold and silver. This one all but jumped backward.

Hours passed as Peter crept across the room, his throat growing so dry that he could taste the metal in the room and tension throbbing more cruelly in his head and muscles by the minute. The coins would not let any part of his body touch them—they shied away not only his hands, but his feet, and even his hair. And yet they multiplied in his presence. Where he stepped, new shillings and florins appeared.

Obviously he would have to hire a servant to pick up the coin for him. An inconvenience, certainly, but if this was the universe's notion of punishment…well, that was absurd, because he could manage this. He wouldn't be the first rich man who had stewards and servants handle his money for him. 

_Truly,_ said an unpleasant voice in his mind. It sounded disturbingly like Corporal Bardolph. _And what is to keep any servant from running off with the entire fortune?_ You _can't touch it, even if you coin it every time that you take a step. You couldn't touch it if it was poured directly into your hands._

The first touch of hollowness within began to bother Peter then. _Gloves,_ he thought desperately. _I'll wear gloves. I'll be able to touch the coins if I do that—_

But no. The coins sprang up whether he wore shoes or not. Gloves, most likely, wouldn't do anything.

This—ridiculousness—was not going to be a problem. He wouldn't let it.

Plodding to the door and ignoring the coins fleeing from him like frightened children, he unlatched it, peered out, and saw an older woman whom he was willing to wager was the innkeeper's wife. He called out to her.

"Mistress, if you could spare a few sturdy sacks?' he asked, giving her his best approximation of a winning smile. "And a broom with all its bristles? And—I beg you—your best meal and your finest ale when I am done?"

***

He actually swept most of the coins into the sacks within an hour or two. He was still leaving a trail of coins behind him as he walked and there seemed to be no way to recapture all of them, but he'd already decided that if he just kept a broom, a rake and a shovel with him at all times, as well as numerous empty sacks, then he should be fine. He could even see some advantages to this. If he simply walked in a circle when he needed money, coins would appear where he'd trod, and all he'd have to do is sweep them into a bag. He would never be penniless again. And if he turned the coins into vast estates…why, they'd have to stay put, wouldn't they? Fields and vales couldn't simply roll away from his touch.

 _Coins dogging his footsteps_. He chuckled. Whether this was Ned the cooper's doing, or the work of some prankish imp, or Fate playing a trick, it was not nearly the burden that it could have been. It just took a little imagination to get around these tiny problems…and why not? It wasn't as if he was the wickedest man in the world. He was a very minor sinner in the grand scheme of things.

He ignored the part of his mind which was stating in a trenchant tone that Fate wasn't fair with her judgments. Things happened betimes—some wondrous and some foul—and afterwards, there was no going back and no appeal.

He staggered down the stairs half-bent double, wondering where he could buy a horse. And a cart. And perhaps a donkey or two. After all, "Stephen Thatcher" was a man of means now. He wondered briefly if, after he bought a fine home and some land, he should buy a red bull-calf and name it Peter…for old times' sake.

The innkeeper's wife met him at the bottom of the stairs. "Master Thatcher," she said in a polite if nasal voice, "your meal will be ready soon. If you'll go to the common room, I'll serve you there."

A few minutes later, after he'd sat down at an empty table and put his sacks on the bench beside him, she served up a trencher of mutton stew and a mug of warm ale. Despite the indifferent quality of the food, Peter felt his mouth watering. It had taken him several days to get from Upper Slaughter, where he'd had that unfortunate encounter with the cooper, and last night he'd been too tired to do anything but sleep. By now his body was fairly screaming for food, while his throat was so dry that it felt as if someone had scraped it raw with a razor. His hand was shaking as he picked up the mug and gulped down a good third of it…

And began coughing—no, gasping. A bone must have fallen into the ale and it was tearing his throat apart from the inside, and he _had_ to get it out, he _had_ to, please God, because he couldn't _breathe_ …

A blood-covered shilling flew from his mouth and onto the table.

Wild-eyed, Peter stared at it and then, trembling, poked a tentative finger at it. It instantly skittered away.

A horrific idea was welling up in Peter's mind and had to be denied. Defiantly, he took a heaping spoonful of the mutton stew. A moment later, he had his hand to his throat, a thin whistling noise the only sound that he could make, and all but blacking out for lack of air.

Five coins—two shillings, two florins, and one mark—ripped their way free of his throat, falling onto the table and, in the case of the mark, into the stew. If possible, all were bloodier than the previous coin had been.

 _I can't,_ he thought numbly, gazing at the meal he couldn't consume, the knowledge of his doom striking him with reverberating blows, as a blacksmith's hammer strikes hot steel. _I need to, but I can't…_

He would have screamed if his throat had been less raw. 

_I hope you choke on your money,_ that damnable cooper whispered in the ear of Peter's memory. _I hope you choke on it._

***

**III. Rebellions**

As the muster-roll soldiers marched away across the war-torn planet of Albion that General Northumberland and his forces were unaccountably _still_ trying to seize, it once more occurred to Private Francesca "Frankie" Feeble that there was nothing right about this entire situation. It seemed to her that there should be more to a war than merchant princes and corporate viscounts rebelling as if they were small children who disliked the word "no" and elected kings trying to prove their—what? Kingliness? Kingosity?—by trying to hammer said nobles into the ground. _Albionites shouldn't be fighting with Albionites. I'd respect the king and his sons a deal more if each one fought the nobles directly and left the rest of us out of it._

It wasn't that she minded dying. As she'd told Sir Grease-Palm and Corporal Boodle, she owed God a death, as every person did. If the planet had been invaded by, say, New Burgundy or Aquitania, she'd have fought—not eagerly, but she would have tried.

It was the notion of dying for no more than a nobleman's spite or a king's obstinacy that irked her. It seemed a wretched waste, and as a tailor—she preferred the older term to the more commonly used "fashion engineer"—Frankie was fair sickened by waste. Thirteen inches of stitchery for every foot of fabric, that had to be the rule. All right, 33.02 centimeters for every 30.48 centimeters. The point was, when you didn't have much, you used everything you had and then some. You didn't pick up the ugly and oddly-shaped scraps and burn them with a spate of laser bursts for the sheer pleasure of it.

Privates Wart and Shadow—or, as Frankie called them now, Tamsin and Simone—weren't nearly as perturbed by all this as she was. Tamsin had settled into soldiering with a right good will. If the clothes were often wretched hand-me-downs from soldiers and pilots who'd been killed, Tamsin didn't mind; the uniforms and oxygen suits, however bloody they might be when she got them, were a bit more intact than the rags she'd been wearing when she'd been selected in an impromptu lottery in Justice Shallow's orchard. She didn't even mind going onto the field after battle to retrieve clothes or boots from corpses. That had repelled Frankie at first, until Tamsin, blinking up at her owlishly, had asked her what was wrong.

"Their bodies don't _need_ clothes," she explained with earnest patience."Either they're in Heaven—or reincarnated, or in some other dimension—and wouldn't want to bother with anything left on earth, or they're in Hell and nothing this side of the grave will quench the burning. And I don't think soldiers mind other soldiers using their things to stay warm, do you?"

When Tamsin put it that way, Frankie really couldn't object too much. At her worst, Tamsin only traded the clothes and boots for other items needed by her or someone else. She was good at getting bargains, too, arguing fiercely and imaginatively with her fellow soldiers or with civilian hawkers in various marketplaces. If she lost, and she sometimes did, she only smiled and complimented the skill of whoever had bargained her down.

"My mother was a fishmonger," she said when Simone and Frankie asked her about this. "The kind that you hardly ever see outside of luxury hotels specializing in historical re-enactments. She had a voice like clanging brass. She _loved_ the game of bargaining. So do I, for all I'm no good at it. I'd not want someone to think an armed soldier was angry with them for bargaining well."

"No good at it!" Simone protested. "Woman, I've heard you—"

"Then you should know," replied Tamsin, her smile slightly wistful. "I'm not nearly as loud nor as ruthless as a bargainer should be. But I can make shift at getting things for you two and the rest of the troop, even if I _am_ terrible as a soldier."

She was. She was sensitive to loud noises, to the point where they caused her actual pain, and few battlefields, Frankie reflected, had ever been quiet while the battle was being fought. Even with cloth and wax in her ears as improvised earplugs—because of course any imports of modern earplugs had been deemed nonessential for a war zone by generals, corporate nobles, and idiotic interstellar bureaucrats alike—Tamsin flinched at every shot. 

Any rational army would have considered this a disability and invalided Tamsin out. It wasn't as if she could shoot anything with her hands over her ears. But their sergeant, a short, barrel-chested man named Silgrave who had the long face and floppy reddish-blond bangs of one of Old Earth's moor ponies, took Tamsin's behavior for cowardice, and said so with unpleasant frequency. It wasn't, but Frankie knew that there was no point in arguing with Silgrave. The sergeant would only be open to new ideas if someone—someone fighting on the enemy's side, naturally!—pierced his head with a musket ball or a sword.

Ludicrously antique weapons, these, but the idea was to minimize the damage to the planet. It was perfectly all right for people to kill each other in war, because people were expendable. Planets that could support human life, however, were rare. And if one side was allowed to use plasma force fields, thunder generators and cyborg insects, then the other side would demand to do the same, and matters would escalate very quickly to a pointless and planet-killing arms race. 

So it had been decided several hundred years ago by the galactic government—the Technocratic Union of Stars, Planets and Systems, which normally had about as much to do with planetary governments as the king of Albion had to do with, say, a fashion engineer—that any member of TUSPS who became embroiled in a war had to use the weaponry of its ancestors. A thousand to two thousand years ago was the usual standard. The TUSPS even kitted out warring planets with tech that effectively turned off any battle tech that was remotely state of the art. Here on Albion, that meant EMP generators. 

And because of those things, pilots could only land in two or three extremely remote locations, and they could only carry food, water, and medicines. No replacement weapons and no troops—the Galactic Council believed that wars ended more quickly if the numbers of both weapons and soldiers were finite. It was a sore point for every warring faction. Even Simone Shadow, who had to be the gentlest, quietest soldier that Frankie had ever met, had severe doubts about its wisdom, and when Simone thought that a plan might have been spawned by a Slorrixian necrodonkey, anyone believing in _that_ plan had best get themselves a bit and bridle. (And, quite possibly, a subcutaneous nanotech placebo perpetually playing the Latin Rite of Exorcism.)

Silgrave didn't care especially about Simone, either, but he couldn't call her a coward because Simone got results. She was no better a soldier than Tamsin, but she had an unerring ability to wander near the enemy (or someone who might be helping the enemy) without attracting the slightest bit of attention, much less fear. People talked near her…no, they prattled. A thin, frail-looking young woman who had been taunted by her somewhat backward community for most of her life because she'd been born out of wedlock—and why that mattered, Frankie had no idea—she could manage to be as invisible as her surname at noon. Like certain flowers in the field that were seemingly plain but that attracted all the bees, Simone drew the forces of Northumberland's remaining allies and set them buzzing, in her hearing, about plans and troop movements. 

So, despite his distaste for spies, Silgrave couldn't object too much to Simone telling him what she'd happened to overhear. Simone and her flawless memory had saved much of the troop at least three times. It was hard to argue with success like that. The other men certainly didn't. A fellow from a pious family—what was his name? Fisher? Carpenter?—had nicknamed Simone Shadow "Simon Peter," because, like the saint, she had the ability to bar the living from entering Paradise. 

As for Frankie herself, she had become the _de facto_ medic, which, in her view, was just one more example of TUSPS' appalling planning. So far as the galactic twatwaffles were concerned, planets at war could have medicine but only a limited number of medical personnel. Frankie's troop wasn't due to get a trained doctor for another eighteen months, assuming that the war and the troop lasted that long. Since there were only two scientists among the soldiers (a hydroponics farmer and a geologist) and since fashion engineers had to learn anatomy in order to design garments that provided oxygen and protection against potential hazards like acids, poison and disease, Frankie had been volunteered. _Damn you, Silgrave._

She wasn't bad at it. She could make herbal poultices, elixirs and other treatments that worked, or at least semi-worked, when they were too far from pilot landing sites to obtain better medicine. She could smell the differences between stomach flu and dysentery. And of course she could stitch up wounds, even if using plastithread—the same thing she used to mend holes in clothes—bordered on the barbaric. 

There was only one thing she couldn't do, and sadly, it was the most essential skill in an army medic's repertoire—surgery. She was far too near-sighted to operate. The joke among her fellow soldiers was that she was marching through this war without even seeing it.

***

The Battle of Arledge Wood should have been brilliant, Frankie reflected later. Simone had come up with intel and had informed Silgrave of what armies were coming and when. They'd stolen from a supply caravan two days before, and were now laden with medicines and, for a change, more weapons than they knew what to do with. Most of them were healthy. They felt, for once, as if they were on the winning side. 

Which sounded strange, at first hearing. They were on the king's side, and yes, King Henry won battles—those that he fought in and planned, anyway. However, Frankie's troop was not, in the end, a well-trained force like the King's Own or the practiced private armies of the corporate dukedoms far to the north, which were always battling each other in what everyone else called minor wars and what they termed "hostile takeovers." It was merely a conglomeration of amateurs who'd been pulled into this because they were too poor or too proud to bribe draft sergeants or lottery officials into forgetting about them.

So it felt good to be that confident. Frankie cherished it until the moment that it was replaced…first by fear, and then by simmering anger.

Frankie was actually at the front this time, not by choice but because the troop had separated one lord's army from the others and was now trying to pound it what looked like into strawberry preserves. There was nowhere behind the front for the medics, not this time. There was only a muggy, smoke-filled battlefield and, barring a few people who were off on spy missions, such as Simone, everyone was fighting. Frankie, unwilling to fire pistol or musket for fear of accidentally killing someone on her side that she couldn't see, compromised by tending the wounded and occasionally waving her pistol around in what she hoped was a vaguely threatening manner. When you couldn't actually participate, it was best to show willing.

Then—in the midst of the snarl of muskets and the explosive profanity of Silgrave, who was swearing at everyone—a thunderous cannon boomed, the sound reverberating throughout the forest, filling the entire world. And Tamsin screamed. 

Frankie stood up, leaving her potions and patients, and raced toward Tamsin's voice, which was almost impossible to make out below the cannon's roar. Only after she'd started searching did a painful realization hit her: the smoke-and-dust-filled air reduced what little she could see with her blurred, myopic vision, while the battlefield was so infernally loud that she had no clue how near or far a cannon, a musket or a howling, gut-stabbed victim might be.

The other members of the troop helped. One turned her in the right direction; another hissed "Follow my voice!", leading her toward a third, who placed their hand in hers, silently showing her where she had to go next. The portion of her mind that was _not_ gibbering in a dark and gloomy corner was dimly grateful. 

At last, guided by the rest of the troop, she found her way to Tamsin, who seemed little more than a blurred, grayish-white face splattered with blood. Impossible to tell at a glance if the blood was Tamsin's: Frankie could only see the dark brown expanse that she knew formed the shirt and trousers of Albionite infantry, not any patches that might have concealed a large open wound.

After a cursory examination—pulse present in subject's neck and wrist, subject unconscious but still breathing—Frankie picked up Tamsin in a fireman's lift and headed back to her improvised field hospital. It took longer than she expected. Once more she needed guidance, which she accepted while privately fuming at TUSPS' policy of considering service droids too advanced for Albion's wars. She supposed that taking a service animal to a war zone would be immoral (though why was it all right to send people, in that case? Weren't people animals?), but surely a droid could be useful without being a weapon.

 _Yes,_ she answered herself bitterly. _A service droid would be adorably helpful for about two weeks. Then someone would find a way to turn it into a weapon, a spy, or both._

Once she arrived back at the field hospital, she gave Tamsin a more thorough checking over. No wounds. No injuries, except for bleeding ears. Sound too loud to for Tamsin to endure had knocked her out. She probably wouldn't hear very well for a while, but she would likely be all right. 

Frankie sat back on her heels at that; the knowledge that Tamsin could have died for no reason made her feel as if her bones had turned to glaciers.

Just as she was turning back to her own patients, she heard Simone's voice blaring across the forest battlefield. At first, only the loudness registered with Frankie as she clapped her hands over her ears. Simone must have gotten hold of a vo-am, and an expensive one at that, probably owned by a prince or a noble who felt that he had to be heard by thousands at once. Voice amplifiers were illegal during battles for that very reason. And Simone was not only using the thing, she had it cranked up to fifteen blesseds, at least. 

Then she began listening to what Simone was saying—and no doubt signing for the sake of anyone on either side who was either temporarily or permanently deaf—and a different kind of chill filled her bones.

"STOP! It's _OVER_! The war is OVER." Simone took a deep, shuddering breath and then added, in a lower frequency and a much number and more bewildered tone, "It's been over for six weeks. No one bothered to tell us."

Silgrave spluttered something about Simone committing treason by informing everyone of this and that the revelation of this news constituted top secret, eyes-only information. 

Simone paused for a moment—and Frankie could just picture the searing glare of contempt that she was directing toward Silgrave—and then proceeded to tell the entire story, interspersed with quotes from documents and two spies for the other side who seemed at least as disgusted as Simone herself. How Henry and his brother John had decided to repeat something that they'd tried earlier in the war at Gaultree Forest. How they had been luring the rebellious lords by making them feel safe and had been capturing them one by one. How John of Lancaster had sent in skilled mimics to replace them, as people were about as low tech as was physically possible. How the last of the lords had been captured three weeks back. How the intelligence that she had been given had been a lure, most of it true but the important part—the news that Northumberland and his allies were now in Londinium awaiting trial—omitted. How all of the battles that they had fought and all the deaths that they had suffered since the king and his brother had set this trap were, in a word, useless. 

On this last word, her voice broke, and she fell silent.

Silgrave kept howling that all this was lies, deception, and treachery, and that anyone who believed it was also a traitor. He was so vehement that Frankie wondered if he had suspected for some time that something was wrong but hadn't wanted to believe it. 

She thought of those she'd tended in the past six weeks, as well as for the eight months before that. All those wounded, lamed, blinded or mind-scarred. All because a king didn't believe that he'd captured everyone that he'd set out to catch. Lives altered or ended because some fool in a crown hadn't allowed the enemy to stop fighting. He'd replaced the commanders and told them to act like the lords and warriors they were supposed to be to lure out other, more secret allies. He hadn't mentioned surrender.

She didn't object to dying. But she loathed the thought of dying in this kind of war. Or the kind of war that it had been, she supposed. It was over, if anyone wanted to admit that.

The battlefield was still now, except for Silgrave's ranting. Even the guns and cannons had fallen silent. Yet Frankie didn't have the feeling that anything had stopped for good, merely that everyone was still digesting what they had heard. 

"Time to go home, then," she said aloud, trying to project her voice so that all could hear it."Or wherever we want to go."

Silgrave snorted and uttered an oath as remarkable for its filthiness as for its lack of imagination. "That's a feeble remark!"

"And that's a bad pun even from you, Sergeant." Frankie, knowing that he would bristle at that, continued on. "It's over. The war is _over_. The king won and everyone else lost. So now each of us has to decide what we're going to do next, since we're not members of armies any longer."

This wasn't quite true. At the moment, they were teetering on the edge between continuing to fight out of sheer revenge for the unnecessary deaths and just saying, "Bugger all this," and leaving. The second was the more rational choice, so Frankie assumed that it would not be the automatic one.

Simone, bless her, understood what Frankie was doing. "I think I'll go home," she said, her voice still audible to two armies but not blaring or echoing any longer. "I could use some quiet. Maybe I'll farm. My mother would like that."

One of the northern soldiers—Frankie could tell that much from his accent—spoke up then. "Never fancied working for Northumberland much, and I've naught to go back to, really. I always thought I might like to travel. Albion's not the biggest planet, but I'd enjoying seeing more of it than a fabric factory and battlefields. "

And as if a dam had burst, the soldiers on both sides began talking. Many favored going back where they'd come from. Others dreamed of buying land, starting businesses, marrying, even emigrating to other worlds. Some shouted in anger and blame, and more than a few fights broke out—but it was no worse than a busy night at an inn. If there had been a dartboard here in the woods, Frankie would have put good money on some deep friendships starting.

She was so lost in thought that she barely noticed Simone leaving the field and sitting down beside her until she heard, "Thank you."

"Thank _you_. How did you find all this out?" 

Simone, or at least the blurred and smoky image that was Simone on this smog-choked battlefield, jittered. Frankie took that to mean that she had shrugged. "We had all the information for a perfect battle. I relayed it to Silgrave, but I told him that it just seemed a little too perfect. He didn't like that. It took me a few days to convince him that I wanted to suss out what the enemy was planning for after the Battle of Arledge Forest. And eventually he let me go. But not with much time to spare. I was hoping to evade their sentries and prevent the battle from occurring." She shrugged once more. "One out of two."

_One out of two. It could have been worse—but it could have been so much better._

"What are you going to do now?" Simone inquired. "Assuming that we can just walk away without facing charges of desertion, that is."

Frankie brooded on this for a time. "I can't leave just yet," she said, her voice tinged with both sorrow and frustration. "I have patients. And I don't know who will take care of them if I don't." 

Simone nodded, as if this was no more than she had expected. "And after they're well?"

"I would like to go home," Frankie confessed. "And I'd like to live near you and Tamsin." The thought of being separated from her best friends hurt. "But there are a few other things I need to do first."

Such as finding the money to train in a new profession. The thought of tailoring (all right, fashion engineering) didn't draw her as it once had. And perhaps corrective eye surgery to sharpen her vision, if such a thing were possible for her eyes. If not—well, she would be a purblind physician, that was all. 

And, though she wasn't sure how, altering a few small things for the better. Alterations that might lead to people _not_ being injured or dying because of a protracted personal quarrel or pointless scheming. Though she would have been the first to admit that this last desire was more than a little improbable.

And then what?

She wasn't sure. But she thought it would involve modern earplugs and bargains, illegal tech and invisibility, and stories told and signed before a winter fire. Because she wanted to make a home that was infinitely better than she'd had before.

And how could she possibly do that without her two best friends?

**Author's Note:**

> If you were wondering what Sgt. Silgrave looks like, this is a [moor pony](http://www.augusthill-polperro.co.uk/):
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> The weapons mentioned by Frankie Feeble in the third story [already exist in real life](http://www.geek.com/news/11-real-life-sci-fi-weapons-that-are-the-future-of-war-1631623/). They don't sound like they do, but they do.


End file.
